Holy Family Sunday B
Installation of Pastor, St. Anthony of Padua (et al)
31. XII. 2023
Introduction
I am happy to have the opportunity offer Mass with you today as we celebrate the Feast Day of the Holy Family. It celebrates the fact that the Son of God really did assume our human nature,
really did become like us in everything but sin. For, like all of us, Jesus was part of a family, with Mary his Mother, and Joseph who loved him as a father. If Jesus had not been part of a family, the Incarnation would not be complete.
But have you ever imagined what life was like in home of the Holy Family? No doubt, it was a hard-working family with Joseph working as a carpenter and Jesus as his apprentice, and Mary working hard to put food on the table and to care for the household. The Holy Family was like many other families in Nazareth in those days, but with one big difference: their Child was the Son of God! Mary and Joseph’s unique vocation was to form the humanity the Son of God assumed, to prepare him for the mission for which his Heavenly Father sent him, a mission that Mary and Joseph, at the time, could not have fully comprehended.
Whatever else life was like in the holy home at Nazareth, love prevailed. The pure love of Mary and Joseph was the environment, “the holy oxygen”, in which Jesus came of age as the Father’s beloved Son in the flesh. The Holy Family often spoke of God and the Law and the Prophets. They prayed together. There was no room for anger, resentment, or disunity. Rather, they treated one another with love, spoke the truth graciously, maintained a sense of humor and kept things simple and in good order.
The Holy Family as a Model of Family Life
It is easy to see the importance of today’s feast of the Holy Family. Not only is it a window into the life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it also reveals the truth, beauty, and goodness of the vocation of marriage and family. After all, it is in the family that each of us learns to give and receive love. Children are the fruit of married love, and it is in that love that they grow to be the persons God meant them to become.
All of us recognize how challenging family life can be. We recognize the struggles so many families are experiencing – such as difficult relationships, economic struggles, and loss of loved ones to violence. On this day when we celebrate the Holy Family as a model of family life, let us ask the Lord to bless and strengthen our families and to give us the grace to live the vocation of marriage and family life with selfless love, so that our families may be places of joy, love, prayer, safety, and stability. May our homes also be places of deep and abiding friendship, where family members enjoy one another’s company, have meals together, do things together, go places together, and are proud to belong to one another. For our lives make no sense unless we love and are loved,
and unless we belong to one another, especially our immediate and extended families.
Not only is the family important for the good of individuals, it also serves the good of society. Strong and loving families play a uniquely important role in the education of young people,
in teaching to learn how to settle disputes peacefully, and in overcoming barriers such as poverty and racism. Today’s feast reminds us that in creating and supporting healthy, happy families
and in advocating for family-friendly laws and policies, we are helping to strengthen our community in Baltimore and beyond.
The Parish as a Family of Families
On this Feast of the Holy Family, let us also recall Pope Francis’ description of a parish as “a family of families”. Not only is a parish strengthened by its families; it is made up of families.
And a healthy parish and pastorate is not merely an organizational unit in a diocese, but rather, a healthy, happy parish and pastorate resembles a healthy, happy family.
Like a loving family, a parish family prays together centering its life around Sunday Eucharist. And just as family members need to ask one another for forgiveness, so too as members of a parish family, we need to seek in the Sacrament of Reconciliation both the forgiveness of God and of our sisters and brothers whom we have harmed by our sins. And just as in a family life’s important lessons are taught, so too as a family of faith we gather to listen to the Word of God, taking to heart what God is teaching us through the Church. In a loving family, family members rally around one of its own who is troubled or sick or in need. So too in a loving parish, we reach out in love to fellow parishioners in time of illness, bereavement, or any other kind of distress or need.
In a word, we belong to one another and thus we care for one another. And like any happy family, we form friendships, we enjoy being together, doing things together, serving the needs of others together.
But with the passage of time, every family finds itself undergoing change. And that is also true of parishes throughout the Archdiocese as the City of Baltimore and its surrounding areas change.
Change can be unsettling for families and it can be unsettling for parish families, yet when we work on it together with fellow Catholics across the wider community, we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit who will guide us to strengthen parish life and to make it ever more responsive to needs of parishioners and the needs of those who live in surrounding neighborhoods.
Finally, just as the Incarnate Son of God dwelt in the holy home of Nazareth, so too, just as surely, the Lord dwells among us in our parish churches. Our parish names teach us how to love and cherish the Lord Jesus in our midst: St. Anthony of Padua who held the baby Jesus in his arms; Precious Blood, named for the saving passion and death of the Savior; St. Francis of Assisi who imitated Jesus and taught us to honor his birth; St. Dominic who preached Christ with charity and effectiveness; and the Shrine of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse, who loved Jesus tenderly and followed him with humility.
Thank you for your love and perseverance, for all you are doing in service to your communities of faith, and for your openness to what lies ahead as we look to a future full of hope. Happy New Year! And may God bless you and keep you always in his love.